Ex-fed MP 'defamed' by private life story

A report about the private life of a former federal MP has been deemed defamatory, allowing his civil action against News Corp Australia to proceed to trial.

Dennis Jensen, who was the member for Tangney for 12 years, is suing News Corp's publishing arm Nationwide News and journalist Andrew Burrell over two articles in The Australian newspaper and website over two days in 2016.

Hyperlinks to the online stories were also tweeted by Burrell.

The first newspaper report, headlined "MP's novel approach to foreign relations bound to get people steamed up", centred on a racy fiction novel Dr Jensen wrote named Sky Warriors, which was about a crazed Indonesian dictator who started war with Australia.

It also revealed Dr Jensen had used his parliamentary letterhead to pitch the novel to publishers in 2007.

The article was cleared on Tuesday by a Supreme Court of Western Australia jury, which found it conveyed Dr Jensen had, by using the letterhead, improperly exploited his position as an MP to seek to obtain financial benefit, namely a publishing deal, but that was not defamatory.

They found the second article that focused on Dr Jensen's private life, however, was defamatory on three grounds.